


the world turns yet we stand still

by jadeddiva



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:37:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts like this: with dreams deferred, and hopes dashed, and all the while we bend and break.  Willas Tyrell, in a world where noble men do not lose their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In a world where Ned Stark doesn’t lose his head, Robb Stark never raises his banners, and Sansa Stark is never tempted with Highgarden. Written because I felt like some Angsty!Willas today.

_It starts like this:_

He meets her at the Tournament of the Hand.  Sansa Stark is a child then; she smiles demurely as his brother Loras bestows his favor on her, and cheers as Loras thunders down the  stretch, lance extended, hitting home every time. 

Willas Tyrell is two-and-twenty, and Kings Landing is too noisy, foul, and dirty for someone who has spent their life in the lush gardens of the Reach.  He has come from Storms End with Loras for the occasion.   He does not stay long – long enough for the feast following the tourney, long enough to make a thorough report to Margaery when he arrives home.

“What was the capital like?” his beloved little sister says, not even waiting until he climbs out of the wheelhouse to pester him.  “What were the ladies wearing? Did Loras win?”

“One question at a time, little rose,” Willas chides her.  She links her arm in his as they walk towards the house.  Not for the first time does Willas feel her steady pull, her desire to move faster, her ability to accommodate her crippled older brother.

Kings Landing was as crowded as ever, he tells her.  Loras won the tourney, but gave his title to the Hound.  The feast was lovely, and the ladies now where their hair up in many small twisted braids.

“Where there any ladies my age?” Margaery asks breathlessly.  “I heard that Lord Stark has a daughter but a few years younger than me.”

“A fair girl,” Willas says, “but more like a child than a lady.  Utterly smitten with Loras.”

He does not think about Sansa Stark for some time.

 

_It continues like this:_

Willas spends time with his hounds, his books, his horses, and his letters.  He corresponds with Oberyn Martell and they discuss animal husbandry.  He corresponds with his uncle and grandfather in Oldtown, and they discuss news of the day.  He corresponds with Loras in the capital, and he hears news of Lord Stark and his two daughters.  

He hears the idle gossip that the king will marry his son to Lord Stark’s daughter.  His father hears it too, and within a fortnight the Tyrells are dispatched to Kings Landing once more, Margaery and Willas and Garlan and Lady Olenna in tow.   Margaery is the most excited, Willas the least, and Garlan makes a point to tease him about the ladies at court who will want to sink their claws into the heir to Highgarden.

They are greeted not by the King, but by the Queen and Prince Joffrey. Behind them he spies Sansa Stark, much taller than she was two years ago and far more beautiful.  She is no longer a child, yet she watches Margaery’s arrival with an innocence that Willas finds unusual in the capital.

There are welcomed at a feast that night, and once Margaery and their grandmother set to work charming the Prince and Queen respectively, Willas can plainly see the look of sadness on Sansa Stark’s face.  Guilt floods his stomach – what little lady doesn’t dream about being a queen?

“You should dance with Lady Sansa,” he whispers to Garlan, who has only begun the process of asking for Leonette Fossoway’s hand, and has yet to hear back from her father. 

“Why?” Garlan asks.  “She has many dance partners.”

“Because our family’s schemes are making her life miserable,” Willas hisses, “and because you are a knight.  You can charm a lady and make her forget that your sister is hellbent on stealing her prince from her.”

The words tumble out and surprise both Willas and Garlan.  The emotion behind his words startle Willas more than anything else, when he realizes that he does feel more than just guilt for Lady Sansa – he feels anger at his family’s meddling, and a fierce desire to see her happy.  He decides it is because she is just a child, and no children should be sad (none in his family ever were).

Willas watches them dance, and once or twice Sansa glances in his direction, and he feels an odd shiver when their eyes meet.  He smiles, and nods his head, and turns to watch Margaery dance.  Occasionally, he sees them out of the corner of his eye, and she looks so happy that her sorrow from earlier seems like a dream.

Everyone around him moves and talks and laughs and dances, but not him.  The feeling presses into him like a heavy weight on his heart.

He tries to squelch the feeling of regret that it is Garlan who dances with the Lady Sansa, not him.  He tries not to think about what the curve of her hip might feel like under his hand, or what it might sound like if she were laughing at his remarks, not Garlan’s.  He tries to not to think about his utter isolation – the ruined heir, the cripple, the rejected proposals and the nights (few, far between, and too many for the heir of House Tyrell) spent with the whores of Oldtown who love him for some gold dragons but forget his face by the morning.

There is a gaping hole in him that he will try to fill with horses and birds and dogs and pretending to be happy for everyone else, but it will never fill completely because he himself is not a whole man, and so it will remain, below his throat and above his heart. 

He rubs his eyes with his hand, and takes a deep breath, keeping the tears at bay.

He is already a sorry heir for his supposedly great house.  He will not become worse.

 

_It progresses like this:_

They spend too much time in Kings Landing, but slowly, Margaery both charms the Prince and Sansa Stark alike, and when Willas sees her with one or both of them during his daily walks of the grounds,  they are always laughing or smiling.

Willas finds himself spending an inordinately large amount of time watching Sansa Stark – so much time that he feels horribly old and decrepit, but there is something so kind and beautiful in the way that she moves, in her attention to all of those at court, and even in the way that she addresses him now that they’ve been in each other’s company for some time.   She always makes sure to walk slowly when they walk together, and when they sit at dinner she always asks him about his interests.  She is so charming that Willas forgets that he is not a whole man until there is dancing, and then he does his best to smile while Garlan and the others take their turn with Lady Sansa. 

There is something that draws him to Lady Sansa, and he does not know quite what it is.  She is too fair for the likes of him, and there is still some sadness in Lady Sansa’s eyes when the Prince spends too long looking at Margaery, and Willas hates that he feels powerless to prevent it.

He has spoken to Grandmother once, and that resulted in nothing.  Grandmother does not think him as much a fool as his father, but she does not want him to stand in her way either.  Margaery is focused and oblivious, and when a marriage between the Reach and the Crown is announced, Willas can practically feel the waves of pride that drift off his grandmother and sister.

It is later, when he finds Sansa Stark crying in a passageway, that he wishes he could throttle them all.

“Are you all right?” he asks her.  She stand suddenly, wipes her eyes with the tips of her fingers and smiles shakily.

“I am quite all right, my lord.  You must be so thrilled for your sister.”  Her courtesies are delivered with a practice ease, with just the smallest quiver at the end of her sentences.   Her tears make her blue eyes shine, and Willas feels horrible for finding a lady in a state of grief to be so breathtaking.

“Margaery is quite thrilled, yes,” Willas says.  “But I did not ask about Margaery.  I asked about you.”

Lady Sansa is taken aback, but she smiles pleasantly.  “Thank you, my lord, but I am fine.  I must rejoin the feast.”

She brushes past him, smelling of lemon and something else, and Willas waits until she is gone to slam his cane against the nearest column.

Sansa Stark leaves for the North the next day, for the wedding of her brother Robb. 

Willas feels more lost than usual.

 

_And then this:_

Willas asks Lord Stark for Sansa’s hand.

“She is a fair and amiable lady,” Willas tells him.   “I think she would do well in the Reach.”

Lord Stark sends a raven to Winterfell, to ask Lady Sansa if she will have him.

A raven returns several days later.

The answer is no.

Willas does not leave his room for over several days.  He lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, the whole inside him growing bigger.  If Sansa Stark, the kindest soul he knows, does not want him, then there is no hope for him at all.

 He writes to his father to ask to come home, and he is told no again. 

There is something so broken in him that he cannot bear to face Garlan, or Margaery, and it is finally his grandmother that enters his chambers.

“You will be Lord of Highgarden,” she tells him.  “You are not some lovesick fool.  Get up, and help us with this wedding.”

He does what he is told, and goes through the motions of planning the wedding.   He watches Margaery preen for the Prince, and he watches Garlan watch him apprehensively, and he watches Lord Stark treat him kindly (he was so kind when his daughter refused Willas, after all).  He watches, and the world continues to shift around him, and he is always on the side, sitting quite still.

It is enough to make him dizzy.

 


	2. Sansa

_It starts like this_ :

She is still a young girl, not yet flowered, when her father is named Hand of the King.  Kings Landing is a foreign place to a girl raised in the North, and all of the sights and sounds and smells and tastes are so different from home that she cannot help but gasp when they enter the Red Keep.

Her days are spent with her septa and often with Princess Marcella, and sometimes Prince Joffrey visit them.  He is handsome, and he is the Prince, and Sansa often tumbles into bed at night ready to dream of marrying him and being his queen.

Arya thinks her foolish, but Arya does not care for that which other girls do, and Sansa ignores her.

Her days pass in idle bliss until she bleeds, and then there’s an added sweetness to life: the King, an old friend of Father’s, wants her to marry Prince Joffrey.   Every day is spent in anticipation of a betrothal, every night spent wishing for something other than bitter disappointment.

Her father tells her that she is too young.  Her mother tells her that she is too young.  Arya tells her that she is stupid.  And Prince Joffrey calls her his lady.  The Queen will often sit with her and twist her hair into the elaborate patterns they wear here, not the simple ones from home, and Sansa will feel like she is in the top of a hill, ready to run down at full speed.

Then Margaery Tyrell arrives at court, and everything changes.

 

_It continues like this:_

Margaery Tyrell is three years older than Sansa, and far more beautiful.  Her hair is not too bright, her skin not too pale, and she is not too tall.  Sansa feels an ungainly, unsightly creature next to her, with her long limbs and too-bright hair, and when Prince Joffrey’s eyes shift towards Lady Margaery, it takes everything for Sansa to not be sick.

It is obvious at the feast that night what Margaery’s aims are, and as she watches Prince Joffrey focus less and less on her, and more and more on Margaery, a sickness fills her veins until she feels as if she is filled to the brim with nothing but sadness, and that it will only escape through her eyes.

That is when Margaery’s brother Ser Garlan asks her to dance.

He is kind, this knight from the Reach, and older than Sansa.  Not as old as the heir, Willas, who watches them from the dais, but old enough.  His smile reaches his eyes in a way that Prince Joffrey’s does not, and he is the first of many partners that night, including Ser Garlan’s younger brother, Ser Loras.

Margaery does her best to be kind to Sansa, and Sansa does her best to hate her for it.  Kindness wins, in the end, and Margaery becomes a close friend.  It is good to spend time in the company of women who are not Arya, for as much as Sansa loves her sister, her sister takes no interest in womanly things and prefers to run through the Red Keep like a common urchin.

“Why do you like Lady Margaery so?” Arya asks one night, as Sansa brushes out her younger sister’s hair.

“She is quiet,” Sansa says, bringing the comb through a difficult tangle.  “She is kind.”

“She will be queen, not you,” Arya cautions.

“Lady Margaery would not do that,” Sansa sighs.  “She is my friend.” 

The words feel false on her tongue.

They are made even more false when Margaery’s betrothal to Joffrey is announced the next day.

Sansa has spent enough years at court to know that tears are not proper decorum for the Hand’s daughter, so when she finally sneaks away from the festivities, she bites down on her hand to prevent her sobs from being heard.  Her stomach feels ill like it did when Margaery first arrived, and the tears flow freely down her face, and through it all there is a feeling of loss.  She is no longer Joffrey’s lady, she will no longer be the Queen, and she is nothing but a too-tall, too-pale mess of a child.

“Are you all right?”

Sansa is surprised that she has been found – she must have been gone from the feast for some time.

She is embarrassed, too, that the person who has found her is Margaery’s brother, the eldest Tyrell, Lord Willas.  He looks at her with curious eyes, and she smiles.  She locks away her feelings, for ladies do not cry in passages.

“I am quite all right, my lord.  You must be so thrilled for your sister.”  Her tongue feels too big and too heavy – she can barely say the words.

“Margaery is quite thrilled, yes,” Lord Willas says.  “But I did not ask about Margaery.  I asked about you.”

No one asks about Sansa.  In all the years here, no one has asked how she feels – about being here, about Margaery coming, about Joffrey.  No one, not even Arya.  They have all told her how she should feel, but not one of them to seem to care if she is all right.

Not one of them but him.  Lord Willas is a nice man, if quiet, and she has found it easy to talk to him of horses and pups and birds, but she often forgets he is there.  He seems to keep himself outside, and never really join in. It is strange and confusing that this observer would ask how she feels.

Sansa stands up straighter.  She smiles.  “Thank you, my lord, but I am fine.  I must rejoin the feast.”

She leaves for Winterfell the next morn for her brother’s wedding. 

The further they are from King’s Landing, the more the sadness seeps in.

 

 

_It progresses like this:_

There is a letter one day from her father.  Not the kind of letter that asks about their health and tells about the capital.  This letter is far more important than that.

“Lord Tyrell has asked for your hand in marriage,” her mother reads, holding the letter out so that Sansa may inspect it.   “Your father wants to know your thoughts on the matter.”

“Ser Garlan?” Sansa asks, wondering if all the dancing was for this purpose.

“Lord Willas Tyrell, heir to Highgarden,” Lady Catelyn amends.  “I have heard the Reach is very beautiful.  House Tyrell is very wealthy.  You would not want for anything.”

Sansa has tried not to think about that night but it is inevitable because when she thinks about Kings Landing she thinks about Joffrey and Margaery and Willas bloody Tyrell finding her in that passageway.  Just his name conjures up an embarrassed flush to her cheeks.  She quickly ducks her head lest her mother think she’s flattered by the attention.

The truth is that she does not know Lord Willas, not that well, and the only thing she knows is that he must pity her.  Why else ask for her hand so close after his own sister’s betrothal? Why ask at all? He is older than her, and he cannot have any interest in her or her concerns.

“No,” she says.  “I am not ready to be married yet.  Tell Father no.”

Her mother nods but Sansa can see the tight-lipped smile.  She thinks that Sansa is admitting the truth that her parents have been telling her for years – she is too young to be married.

Lady Catelyn cannot possibly know that her daughter does not want to marry anyone who pities her.

 

_And then this:_

The presence of the Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell is request as the marriage of Prince Joffrey of House Baratheon to Lady Margaery of House Tyrell.  By the King’s command, she goes to Kings Landing.

Sansa does not have a new dress made.  Instead, she refashions an old grey one to look newer.  She cannot muster anything that nears enthusiasm as she heads back south, through snow and rain, to the wedding that should have been hers.

Nearly a year has passed since the betrothal, and nearly a year since she told Willas Tyrell ‘no’ and Sansa feels like a different person lives in her skin.  She is angry and bitter that she is only meant to be a thing either tossed aside when someone prettier arrives at court.  She is scornful that her only marriage proposal was not from a Prince, but from the older brother of her rival.  She is nothing the fair thing she was when she left for the North, and she is all too aware of it.

Margaery, as always, is beautiful, and Joffrey handsome, but Sansa Stark is of no concern to the future King and Queen.  After she greets them, she turns away with a fading smile and orders her lady to unload her belonings.

Her room in the Tower of the Hand is unchanged, but it feels like a lifetime ago that she was here.  There’s a linger shadow of her happiness that hides in the corners, and she can see it if she squints. 

When she is called for supper, she descends on her father’s arm with a heavy feeling in her heart.

House Tyrell is present, of course, and she is surprised to find that Ser Garlan is married, his lady wife shy and demure at his side.   When it is time for dancing, she finds that she is lighter on her feet than she has been for some time, and she falls back into an easy rhythm of teasing him.

“My lord,” Sansa says, “I am surprised to find you married.  I always thought you held out hope for my hand.”  She adds a wink at the end.

“Lady Sansa, you are quite fair, but my heart has long since be taken.”  Garlan, gallant as ever, smiles at her.

“Then why so many dances?” she asks, curious.  She had idly entertained the notion of Garlan Tyrell only on occasion, and never seriously, but now there is a burning pressing desire to know if all the Tyrells find her a plaything – an idle fancy, or something to pity, or something to ruin.

“Because my brother asked it of me,” Garlan admits.  He glances to the dais, where his brother Willas sits.  He is looking down into his cup, and only seems to look up when Sansa’s eyes are upon him.  With that, he looks back down and away, and Sansa feels something she can’t quite describe.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because he thought you were sad,” Garlan tells her.  “And he cannot dance with you himself.”

“Why can he not dance with me?” Sansa asks.  Garlan stops dancing.

“My lady,” Garlan says quietly, “surely you remember that my brother walks with a cane.”

Garlan smiles and drops her hands, weaving his way back to his new bride, and Sansa takes a moment to remember what she can about Willas Tyrell.   Same coloring as his family, but she cannot recall more than a softness to his voice, a kindness to his manner.  She does not remember much about him, let alone his cane, and a shock passes through her that she could so overlook a physically malady. 

She glances back up to the dais, where Lord Willas sits.  A heaviness comes over her at that moment, and it threatens to pull her under.


End file.
